WhatsApp is the world's most popular instant messaging service, and it's owned by Meta—the same company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. If you value your privacy and digital security, I strongly recommend removing all of these apps from your phone. If there are any you absolutely can't live without, at minimum revoke every permission you can to protect yourself from the serious privacy and security risks these apps pose.
The best alternative to WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger is Signal, which offers genuinely private and secure messaging. Signal encrypts all your messages and metadata, meaning Signal itself knows almost nothing about you. Crucially, it's run by a nonprofit organisation, not a corporation whose entire business model depends on harvesting your personal data to sell targeted advertising. For Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, you're far safer accessing them through your web browser rather than installing their apps.
Even if most of your contacts use WhatsApp, you can make a difference by encouraging the people you contact the most to move to Signal. If most of your messages are on Signal—and then likely the most sensitive ones too—you can start to take back your privacy. And secondly, if we all start to do this, it will mean more people are on Signal, hopefully gradually making it more attractive to move across!
If you don't read any further, this is the short version: Delete Meta's apps, use Signal for messaging, and access social media through your browser instead.
WhatsApp spies on your intimate communications
While WhatsApp claims* your message contents are end-to-end encrypted, Meta extensively collects the 'metadata' around your conversations. This includes who you message, when you message them, how often you communicate, and your location data. WhatsApp's privacy policy states that the app collects extensive usage logs, including the time, frequency, and duration of your activities.
This metadata collection creates a detailed profile of your most private relationships and activities. If you message your therapist, doctor, lawyer, or visit sensitive locations like medical clinics, Meta instantly knows something deeply personal about you—information that could be legally or personally compromising.
Even worse, they scan your entire contact list to build social networks of people who may not even use Meta's services, creating detailed profiles of individuals who never consented to this data collection.
* Because WhatsApp is ‘closed-source’, we can’t examine the code to check their claims. However, given that you can report messages to Meta for violating the terms of use, they clearly do have mechanisms to read messages. Signal, on the other hand, is ‘open-source’, meaning that anyone can read the source code, and independent experts have verified that it’s private and secure.
Meta has a history of privacy violations on an industrial scale
Meta's track record on privacy is…not great. Here are some of their most egregious violations:
The Cambridge Analytica scandal
Meta allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest data from up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent, which was then used to manipulate political campaigns. The company was fined $5 billion by the FTC for this breach—yet their stock price actually went up after the fine was announced, showing how little these penalties actually deter such behaviour.
Secret web tracking on all Android devices
Between September 2024 and early June 2025, Meta's Android apps (Facebook and Instagram) covertly tracked users' web browsing, even in incognito mode, or if using a VPN. Meta used this method without obtaining consent from users, linking browsing history to Facebook and Instagram profiles. This tracking was so invasive that even Google called it abusive.
The fact that Meta was willing to engage in such underhanded data collection means that simply having one of their apps on your phone poses a serious privacy and security risk.
They used your phone number for advertising
Facebook used phone numbers that users provided for security purposes (like two-factor authentication) for targeting adverts—a direct violation of user trust and their stated privacy policies.
And, just a few weeks ago, WhatsApp started asking users to add their email address ‘for extra security’. Uh-huh…
Meta is feeding your private conversations to their AI
Meta now requires you to manually opt out of having your WhatsApp conversations fed to their AI in every single chat you participate in. This was rolled out with virtually no fanfare—I discovered the ‘feature’ by accident, meaning my private conversations had probably already been processed by Meta's AI systems.
While Meta claims this is only for local AI features like enhanced search (eg, if you type ‘find me that time Andrew complained about how terrible WhatsApp is for privacy’ into the search bar, and it will dig out that bit of chat), the reality is that training data for AI models is one of the most valuable commodities in tech today. Given Meta’s track record of privacy violations, can you trust them not to use your intimate conversations, photos and videos in their ongoing AI development?
Meta wants every photo you've ever taken
The Facebook app now includes a setting asking users to upload every photo on their camera roll to Meta's AI for ‘cloud processing’ and unspecified ‘suggestions’.
Think about what's in your photo library: that picture of a rash you took to show the doctor, pictures of your whole family on the beach in swimwear, that snap you took of your passport in case you lose it, screenshots of personal information… Do you really want Meta having access to every image you've ever captured on your phone? And can you be sure that Meta won’t roll out a ‘feature’ like this to their other apps in future? Again, images are a hugely valuably commodity for AI training these days—the incentive is definitely there for Meta to hoover them all up.
WhatsApp has added ads
Meta makes plenty of money from WhatsApp both by using the data it gathers to serve ads on its other platforms and by business accounts paying for certain features. But apparently this isn’t enough, and there are ads directly in WhatsApp now. This is just in the ‘stories’ tab for now—which honestly I don’t use very much—but it really wouldn’t come as a surprise to get a ‘helpful’ suggestion for a pizza place next time I tell someone that I’m hungry in a WhatsApp chat…or maybe an ad for a therapist next time I mention that I’m not feeling great?
When advertising is the primary business model, privacy inevitably takes second place.
How to protect yourself
The safest approach is to completely uninstall all Meta apps from your phone. If you absolutely must keep some for work or social reasons, you can try to limit the risk by doing the following:
- Revoke all unnecessary permissions: Don’t give Meta access to your camera, microphone, contacts, photos, or location unless absolutely essential for basic functionality. If this is necessary, allow it ‘this time only’ so it is revoked as soon as you’ve finished whatever you're doing.
- Disable data sharing: Go through every privacy setting and opt out of data sharing wherever possible.
- Use browser versions: Access Facebook, Instagram, and Threads through your web browser instead of apps when possible.
- Switch to Signal: Download Signal and start convincing your contacts to make the switch. This is honestly far quicker and easier than going through pages and pages of Meta privacy settings for all their apps!
However, given Meta’s willingness to exploit Android vulnerabilities for covert tracking, having any of their apps installed remains a privacy risk.
Join the movement to Signal
I wish I could delete WhatsApp entirely, but it requires a critical mass of people to make the switch before Signal becomes the default messaging platform. That’s where you come in.
Try Signal today, and convince your friends and family to join you. It’s one of the simplest and most effective actions you can take to protect not just your own privacy, but to help create a more secure digital world for everyone. (You might want to share this post to help them understand why you think it’s important—I wrote it to send to my friends, and I hope it’s helpful!)
The choice is clear: continue letting Meta profit from your most intimate communications, or take control of your digital privacy. What will you choose?